Chertoff Seeks a Chemical Security Law, Within Limits

By ERIC LIPTON

Published: March 22, 2006

The nation must move rapidly to bolster protection of its chemical plants against a terrorist attack, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said Tuesday, urging Congress to adopt regulations that the industry has already largely endorsed.

The remarks by Mr. Chertoff, in a speech before industry leaders, were the latest chapter in an unusual turnabout by the Bush administration. It is now lobbying for regulations that senior administration officials worked privately to block shortly after the 2001 attacks, saying then that voluntary measures would be sufficient.

Officials of the Homeland Security Department began indicating last year that they would support a move by Senators Susan Collins, Republican of Maine, and Joseph I. Lieberman, Democrat of Connecticut, to draft such regulations. With a bill now pending before Congress, Mr. Chertoff on Tuesday laid out the provisions the administration was willing to endorse and those it would resist. His speech drew immediate praise from Senator Collins and leaders of the industry, but criticism from environmentalists and some lawmakers, who said it did not go nearly far enough.

All parties seem to agree that the nation's 15,000 chemical plants and other industrial facilities that use or store significant quantities of dangerous chemicals should be required to prepare security plans and then follow up with steps like fencing, cameras and identification cards to control access.

Federal legislation is necessary, Mr. Chertoff said this week, because of what he called ''free riders,'' meaning smaller plants that have not honored voluntary security standards the chemical industry adopted after the 2001 attacks.

In his speech Tuesday, at a forum sponsored by George Washington University and the American Chemistry Council, a trade group, he said the regulations should be most stringent for plants that, because of the amount and danger of their chemical stockpiles or their proximity to urban areas, pose the greatest risks.

But he said the nation should have uniform standards, strongly implying that states should not be allowed to adopt their own rules, as New Jersey did late last year, particularly if those rules were more stringent.

He also said private-sector, ''third party'' inspectors could check on compliance, similar to the way accountants certify corporate financial compliance for the government.

And while industrial plants that use dangerous chemicals should voluntarily consider switching to less dangerous alternatives, such moves should not be mandated, Mr. Chertoff said, in a nod to the burden on industry that those changes could entail.

''We are committed in this department in moving forward on sensible legislation,'' Mr. Chertoff said.

Senator Collins said that she welcomed the secretary's support and that she too was eager to pass legislation.

''I am very pleased that this administration has recognized the importance of enacting chemical security legislation this year,'' she said in a statement.

Tim Scott, chief security officer at Dow Chemical, speaking as one member of an industry panel after the event, said, ''What we're doing at Dow falls very much in line with what the secretary was talking about.''

But Andy Igrejas, a program director at the National Environmental Trust, which is frequently critical of the administration's environmental policies, said of the speech: ''It was lame. It reflects pandering to the industry. And it means this could end up being more of a paperwork exercise instead of something that really protects people.''

Dan Katz, chief counsel to Senator Frank R. Lautenberg, Democrat of New Jersey, joined the criticism.

''That is the Enron mentality: trust industry and put the public at risk,'' Mr. Katz said. ''But unlike Enron, the risk here is not that people will lose some of their stock savings. It is that we could have a catastrophic terrorist event.''

Rick Hind of the Greenpeace Toxics Campaign said there were sewage treatment plants in 45 urban areas, as well as power plants and refineries in a number of states, that used extremely dangerous chemicals like chlorine gas and hydrofluoric acid and that could replace those chemicals with alternatives widely used elsewhere and without excessive cost.

Mr. Chertoff said he expected vigorous debate on any legislation. But the fact that this is an election year should not prevent Congress from acting, he said.

''The terrorists aren't planning to take this year off,'' Mr. Chertoff said. ''I refuse to simply abdicate the field this year and say, 'Well, we're going to have to wait until after the election to get serious again.' ''